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Common Sense Translation: "my movie bombed, but it's everyone else's fault cuz they fired me. I had better ideas, but you'll never know!"
TTW's translation: "I'm an asshat that expects people to see my trashy film because I borrowed some well known names. It flopped and I choose to blame everyone else".
Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.
Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.
Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.
timetowaste85 wrote: Common Sense Translation: "my movie bombed, but it's everyone else's fault cuz they fired me. I had better ideas, but you'll never know!"
TTW's translation: "I'm an asshat that expects people to see my trashy film because I borrowed some well known names. It flopped and I choose to blame everyone else".
Also he showed up to work high and drunk sometimes. I am pretty sure he is just bitter it didn't do well.
From whom are unforgiven we bring the mercy of war.
It's interesting to watch this film get lower ratings than other Marvel films (like Elektra, which was awful!).
Hopefully Marvel will allow Fox to make an X-Men TV show... in exchange for the Fantastic Four 4. The MCU needs someone after Thanos is dealt with, I don't think Dormmamu will cut it, and Doom/Galactus/Kang are tied up with the F4 rites, so Marvel need 'em back.
That test is not only meaningless, but was never meant to be taken seriously. Furthermore there are some terrible exploitative films that pass that test, and a number of what some would call 'cinematic art' films that fail it hard.
I am shocked, shocked I tell you that this tanked. They had in their hot little hands a property that was known to most of the movie going population by the two gakky movies they’d already released. And to lead their reboot they’d manage to secure an actress we all knew as a secondary character on a well received tv show. And also three other guys!
Where could it all have gone wrong?
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Marvel made a movie about a Treeman and a talking Raccoon led by some random TV actor.
“Made by the producers who brought you…” actually matters when they can follow with a list including The Avengers, Iron Man etc… Marvel have got to a point where they can make whatever they want and know there's trust there that fans will line up no matter how silly the concept, or who is starring.
If this had come through the Marvel banner then the casting wouldn’t have mattered. But Fantastic Four doesn’t have that, and instead it’s got to rely on it’s own brand and star power. It’s own brand is shot to pieces, because holy crap those previous two movies were terrible, so that leaves star power. And uh, yeah, the biggest name was a secondary character on a tv show.
Even if this film was good it would have struggled.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
timetowaste85 wrote: This. It's the difference between a good director/studio and a walking pile of rabid bear feces.*
Thing is, you can’t really know if a film is good before you see it. Reviews matter, but plenty of films do very well despite good reviews, and plenty of others do very poor business despite great reviews. Word of mouth is nice but very few films actually sustain their box office – most films get almost all their business long before word of mouth has had a significant effect. So the actual quality of the film matters, but at least as important is people’s belief of whether it will be good.
That perception is shaped by a whole lot of things, and typically the biggest has been star power – people go to see a film because the lead actors are liked and known for good movies. Another factor that’s growing in importance is franchise power, either in terms of sequels, or shared universes like Marvel.
And on those two key factors, this new Fantastic Four movie was always in a whole lot of trouble. Even if it had been good, or somehow even really good, it was never going to do business close to any of the weaker Marvel releases.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/08/10 03:38:59
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
“Made by the producers who brought you…” actually matters when they can follow with a list including The Avengers, Iron Man etc… Marvel have got to a point where they can make whatever they want and know there's trust there that fans will line up no matter how silly the concept, or who is starring.
Cue Ant-Man as "exhibit A" for that latter bit. I think it was probably helped a deal by having Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas in it. But the fact still remains that there's really not too many people outside of the comic book fandom who had actually heard of Ant-Man until this movie.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Cue Ant-Man as "exhibit A" for that latter bit. I think it was probably helped a deal by having Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas in it. But the fact still remains that there's really not too many people outside of the comic book fandom who had actually heard of Ant-Man until this movie.
Yeah, Marvel got people to turn in large numbers to see Ant Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. They've got something kind of incredible going on.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
It helps them that their brand is consistently high quality as well. The audiences feel that 'Marvel' is a brand that they can trust. I think that they will keep that brand alive through some bad films, but not through very many bad films.
That test is not only meaningless, but was never meant to be taken seriously. Furthermore there are some terrible exploitative films that pass that test, and a number of what some would call 'cinematic art' films that fail it hard.
Sure, some solidly inclusive films fail it. But really, it is painfully easy to pass that test if you want to, and I cited it along with several other factors relating to the misuse of the character and actress. The point is not that it failed the test, and thus it was bad; the point is that, with the way that the script worked, Kate Mara's character was mostly pointless and could have been removed without actually changing the plot much. This includes her barely existent dialogue with either her brother, or any of the other women in the film (all... one of them). Which is sad.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/10 09:53:22
Marvel have done a good job and earned their reputation, but it'd be foolish to think that some of their movies aren't risks. Guardians was a risk. It paid off (in a big way). Ant-Man was a risk. It paid off (pretty well).
Not everything with Marvel is a sure thing though.
I actually REALLY liked the last two FF movies. Despite being the biggest name in it, I felt Jessica Alba was the weak link (only in for eye-candy), but Reed/Ioan felt like the oblivious genius, Johnny/Chris/Captain America felt like the cocky hotshot who always got under Ben's gravelly skin, Chiklis/Thing felt like a real tortured soul who couldn't come to grips with what he became until the beautiful blind Alicia Masters saw him for who he was inside, and Julian/Doom felt like an arrogant guy who had everything and lost it due to Reed. They went into space. They came back with powers. Took them over half the movie to come to grips with them, some taking longer/shorter than the others. And Doom going completely power-hungry mad.
Hmmm...yeah, now that I go back through...I stand by saying it was a good set. Middle of the bunch. In Fox's movies it fell under X1&2, FC and DoFP, and above all the rest.
Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.
Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.
Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.
I find myself agreeing with this essay despite not having seen the latest movie. I never much cared for the Fantastic 4 in the comics, and the movies over the last 10-15 years just left me cold. I just could never identify with the heroes or feel the need to care about them. Having never read the origins story of the Fantastic 4 I didn't realize the number and level of poor decisions Reed Richards makes. Told from another perspective I do think the Fantastic 4 could be great villains.
So, what do you fine folks think? Are the Fantastic 4 a bunch of dicks? Or are they just misunderstood?
Pasted for the work blocked.
Spoiler:
Mere minutes into the disastrous new Fantastic Four movie, a young Reed Richards—who will later become an elastic-limbed superhero—borrows a child’s model airplane. Eager to demonstrate his brilliance, he inserts it into a machine that temporarily teleports it into another dimension. When the toy returns, it has been damaged beyond repair, one wing partially broken off and the chassis pitted with mysterious scars. Oblivious, he hands it back to its owner, who barely hesitates before blurting out what everyone must be thinking. “You’re a dick,” the child tells Reed. And he is not wrong.
Perhaps that child can take some comfort in the weekend box office: Fantastic Four brought in a mere $26.2 million from its domestic screenings, ceding first place to the fifth film in a 19-year-old franchise. This dismal showing comes as little surprise, given the film’s poor reviews and its similarly poor reception from the few viewers who made it to the theater.
Some suggest the film floundered thanks to those reviews, to its lack of real movie stars, or just to audience fatigue after years of superhero films. But that throwaway line in this latest fantastic flop speaks to a weakness running deep through the franchise’s history, one that will trouble any future adaptation as it’s troubled them all up till now: The Fantastic Four themselves really are elitist, reckless, privileged dicks.
It’s not just Reed Richards, though it starts with him. Our supposed hero is the kind of person who’s willing to experiment on his fellow humans in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. In his debut in 1961’s Fantastic Four #1, Richards and three friends—none of them scientists—steal a military rocket and launch themselves into the heavens, despite his failure to research “the effects of cosmic rays.” As Ben Grimm, who will pilot the craft, puts it, those rays “might kill us all out in space.” Undeterred, Richards plots a course directly into the “cosmic storm area,” subjecting his fellow travelers to an astral bombardment that sends the ship plummeting back to Earth.
While they survive, the rays profoundly transform them, turning them all into victims of Richards’ profound lack of scientific ethics—and somehow making them into superheroes entirely by accident. Faced with the abject failure of his work, he is not humble. “I’ll call myself … Mr. Fantastic,” he exclaims to the friends he has just permanently mutilated. Presumably still addled by translunar radiation, they do not object to his unearned, self-congratulatory hubris. In another sort of story, he would be the villain. Here, for some reason, he is a hero.
The new film has Reed launching his friends not into the stratosphere, but another dimension. Though it changes this detail, director Josh Trank’s take preserves a critical element of the original: Reed is still a dick. Though he is egged on by his lab mate, Victor Von Doom, it’s ultimately Reed’s own inexplicable charisma (he’s played by Miles Teller, who is also a bit of a dick, apparently) that impels his friends into the dimensional breach. As in every prior incarnation, they suffer for his arrogance.
(Continued from Page 1)
In the comics, other members of the team are little better than Richards. After becoming the Thing, Ben Grimm openly complains that Reed’s girlfriend, Sue Storm, “love[s] the wrong man,” and starts a physical fight to prove the point. In another scene in the first issue, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, carelessly melts a pair of Air Force jets, just one example of the havoc the Four wreak in the name of heroism.
In their earliest days, the Fantastic Four’s douchebaggery was part of what made them stand out. Querulous and clumsy, they were somehow human, in spite of their great gifts. And yet, in retrospect, they were also models of uncommon superheroic privilege. Possessed of seemingly unlimited resources, they owned an entire Manhattan skyscraper, the top floors of which were—according to a diagram in the third issue—tricked out with a hangar for their “orbit plane,” a private projection room, and a launch pad for long-range passenger missiles.
Unlike many other superhero teams, the Fantastic Four were also a surprisingly exclusive clique. In one of his first stories, the well-meaning but perennially broke Spider-Man attempts to join the group, explaining that he thinks he deserves their “top salary.” Despite their apparent wealth, they laugh him off, explaining that they are “a non-profit organization” that pays “no salaries or bonuses.” (A dejected Spider-Man never asks how they manage to live in a luxury high-rise if they “just keep enough money to pay [their] expenses.”) What’s more, unlike virtually every superhero, they also live openly under their own names, seemingly unconcerned that anyone would try to harm them or those they love. Seen in this light, the Fantastic Four aren’t just dicks, they’re entitled dicks.
Other artists and storytellers have known this for years. In Warren Ellis and John Cassady’s terrific series Planetary, for example, members of a thinly masked version of the Fantastic Four are the villains. Known simply as the Four, they greedily hoard the world’s secrets in selfish pursuit of their own transcendence, sacrificing countless lives in the process. The animated Venture Bros. offers a more self-consciously comic parody of the characters, reimagining them as a dysfunctional band of squabbling, if mostly harmless, losers. Both versions capture what the new film can only tacitly acknowledge: The Fantastic Four have always basically been the worst.
In this, our heroes mirror their creators. According to Sean Howe’s history of Marvel, Stan Lee claimed that he was responsible for “the new characters and the somewhat offbeat storyline” of the Fantastic Four’s first appearance, even though the Four, like virtually every Marvel product, emerged from a collaboration. (Unsurprisingly, Lee sometimes identified himself with Mr. Fantastic, the group’s de facto leader and its most intelligent member.) Decades later, fans would argue that Lee denied due credit to the artists he worked with, especially the prodigiously talented Jack Kirby. Of course, Kirby—who sometimes depicted himself as the cantankerous Thing—arguably wasn’t that much nicer. Howe reports that Kirby claimed more or less total credit for the Fantastic Four. Before he intervened, he said, “Marvel was on its ass, literally… and Stan Lee was sitting there crying.”
The earliest comics found a generative frisson in the struggles between the members of its creative team. By contrast, the film’s more technical failings were likely a product of conflict in and around its production process. Director Trank blames Fox, claiming that he had “a fantastic version” that the studio rejected. Some reports suggest Trank was a dick. Others suggest that Fox only filmed the movie because it would have lost the rights to the characters if it failed to do so. If they’re truly more interested in maintaining control of a valuable property than in making something valuable from it, Fox’s executives are no better than Reed Richards and his pals. They’re not alone in this: The Fantastic Four seems to bring out the worst in film executives. In the early ’90s, a German producer hired Roger Corman to make a movie about the characters for a mere $1 million, once again to maintain rights. He never finished the film, leaving the young actors who’d thrown themselves into the project with next to nothing.
In the end, “dick” may not be an idly chosen insult in this film. In fact, Fantastic Four is almost literally a film about dicks, given how few women have speaking parts. I counted two, and one of them is invisible: Sue Storm, who has traditionally been the least dickish of the Four, though she’s also sometimes been the silliest. Brought to life by Kate Mara, she’s not unpleasant—especially relative to the men around her—but she mostly confines herself to the background, even when she’s visible. It’s tempting to tie this to the long history of comic book sexism, but maybe there’s a simpler reason. Maybe she knows it’s best not to be seen in such company.
Jacob Brogan is a Future Tense research associate. He is writing a book about the cultural history of lovesickness. Follow him on Twitter.
Automatically Appended Next Post: You can view almost any of the early super-heroes (or maybe all super-heroes) through the same cynical, post-modern lens and come to similar conclusions.
I'm not sure it is necessarily 'fair' or 'smart' to look back 50 years and say "Wow, what a bunch of evil douches!".
That article is yet ANOTHER thing to blame on this new, horrible Fantastic Four movie!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/11 18:22:29
2015/08/11 18:30:24
Subject: The Fantastic Four - The Movie Discussion
Reposting what I said in the other thread, since it's relevant:
Reed Richards is also a total dick in alternate dimensions: in Marvel Zombies, he PURPOSEFULLY turns all the FF into the zombies, without asking them, instead of trying to save everyone. Doom ends up saving people. In Ultimate FF, Reed kills his own family and I believe he kills one of the other FF. Don't remember who.
Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.
Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.
Due to work, I can usually only ship any sales or trades out on Saturday morning. Please trade/purchase with this in mind.
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